Part 4 (1/2)
_CHAPTER VI
”ODETTE” IN THE WEST. A CHILD'S FIRST PLAY_
An odd and somewhat touching little incident occurred one evening when we were in the far Northwest. There was a blizzard on just then, and the cold was something terrible. I had a severe attack of throat trouble, and my doctor had been with me most of the day. His little boy, hearing him speak of me, was seized with a desire to go to the theatre, and coaxed so well that his father promised to take him.
The play was ”Odette.” The doctor and his pretty little son sat in the end seats of the parquet circle, close to the stage and almost facing the whole house. The little fellow watched his first play closely. As the comedy bit went on, he smiled up at his father, saying audibly, ”I like her--don't you, papa?”
Papa silenced him, while a few people who had overheard smiled over the child's unconsciousness of observers. But when I had changed my dress and crept into the darkened room in a _robe de chambre_; when the husband had discovered my wrong-doing and was driving me out of his house, a child's cry of protest came from the audience. At the same moment, the husband raised his hand to strike. I repelled him with a gesture and went staggering off the stage; while that indignant little voice cried, ”Papa! papa! can't you have that man arrested?” and the curtain fell.
One of the actors ran to the peep-hole in the curtain, and saw the doctor leading out the little man, who was then crying bitterly, the audience smiling and applauding him, one might say affectionately.
A bit later the doctor came to my dressing-room to apologize and to tell me the rest of it. When the curtain had fallen, the child had begged: ”Take me out--take me out!” and the doctor, thinking he might be ill, rose and led him out. No sooner had they reached the door, however, than he pulled his hand away, crying: ”Quick, papa! quick! you go round the block that way, and I'll run round this way, and we'll be sure to find that poor lady that's out in the cold--just in her nighty!”
In vain he tried to explain, the child only grew more wildly excited; and finally the doctor promised, if the child would come home at once, only two blocks away, he would return and look for the lady--in the nighty. And he had taken the little fellow home and had seen him fling himself into his mother's arms, and with tears and sobs tell her of the ”poor lady whose husband had driven her right out into the blizzard, don't you think, mamma, and only her nighty on; and, mamma, she hadn't done one single bad thing--not one!”
Poor, warm-hearted, innocent little man; he was a.s.sured later on that the lady had been found and taken to a hotel; and I hope his next play was better suited to his tender years.
In Philadelphia we had a very ludicrous interruption during the last act of ”Man and Wife.” The play was as popular as the Wilkie Collins' story from which it had been taken, and therefore the house was crowded.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Clara Morris as ”Odette”_]
I was lying on the bed in the darkened room, in that profound and swift-coming sleep known, alas! only to the stage hero or heroine. The paper on the wall began to move noiselessly aside, and in the opening thus disclosed at the head of the bed, lamp-illumined, appeared the murderous faces of Delamain and Hesther Detheridge. As the latter raised the wet, suffocating napkin that was to be placed over my face, a short, fat man in the balcony started to his feet, and broke the creepy silence with the shout:--
”Mein Gott in Himmel! vill dey murder her alreaty?”
Some one tried to pull him down into his seat, but he struck the hand away, crying loudly, ”Stob it! stob it, I say!” And while the people rocked back and forth with laughter, an usher led the excited German out, declaring all the way that ”A blay vas a blay, but somedings might be dangerous even in a blay! unt dat ting vat he saw should be s...o...b..d alreaty!” Meantime I had quite a little rest on my bed before quiet could be restored and the play proceed.
I have often wondered if any audience in the world can be as quick to see a point as is the New York audience. During my first season in this city there was a play on at Mr. Daly's that I was not in, but I was looking on at it.
In one scene there stood a handsome bronze bust on a tall pedestal. From a careless glance I took it to be an Ariadne. At the changing of the scene the pedestal received a blow that toppled it over, and the beautiful ”bronze” bust broke into a hundred pieces of white plaster.
The laughter that followed was simply caused by the discovery of a stage trick. The next character coming upon the stage was played by Miss Newton, in private life known as Mrs. Charles Backus, wife of the then famous minstrel. No sooner did she appear upon the stage, not even speaking one line, than the laugh broke forth again, swelled, and grew, until the entire audience joined in one great roar. I expected to see the lady embarra.s.sed, distressed; but not she! After her first startled glance at the house, she looked at the pedestal, and then she, too, laughed, when the audience gave a hearty round of applause, which she acknowledged.
A scene-hand, noticing my amazed face, said, ”You don't see it, do you?”
”No,” I answered.
”Well,” said he, ”did you know who that bust was?”
”Yes,” I replied, ”I think it was Ariadne.”
”Oh, no!” he said, ”it was a bust of Bacchus; then, when Mrs. Backus appeared--”
”Oh!” I interrupted. ”They all said to themselves: 'Poor Backus is broken all up! Backus has busted!'”
And that was why they laughed; and she saw it and laughed with them, and they saw _that_ and applauded her. Well, that's a quick-witted audience--an opinion I still retain.